1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for generating a table showing events relating to a certain time or period on corresponding time or period positions along a chronological axis, such as a chronological table.
2. Description of the Related Art
Techniques for representing historical or past events in the form of chronological-table data and displaying the events in the form of a chronological table have been proposed. For example, it has been proposed to a chronological table showing Japanese history and world history or social background and company history in comparison with each other.
For example, according to techniques described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-249640, a history of a user from the birth to the current time is displayed as divided into periods of several years, such as a period from the age of 0 to the age of 4, a period from the age of 5 to the age of 9, and a period from the age of 10 to the age of 14, according to chronological data including pairs of date and time data and event data.
According to techniques described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-290913, suitable information is extracted from base materials to generate article data and the article data is registered in an article database. Then, a base chronological table is generated on the basis of the article data, and tentative table-of-contents codes are assigned to individual articles on the basis of the base chronological table to generate a tentative table of contents. Furthermore, article data is extracted from the article database on the basis of the tentative table-of-contents codes, and the style of the article data is changed to a style of main text. Furthermore, pictures or graphics associated with the main text are extracted from the article database to generate a visual document. A chronological history is generated through the series of steps described above.
According to techniques described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-66049, at a server connected to a user terminal via a network, upon receiving a chronological-table display request from the user terminal, personal history information of a user at the source of the request is read from a personal event database, history information is read from a history event database, and data for displaying a chronological table showing the personal history information and the history information in association with each other is generated and sent to the user terminal at the source of the request.